Please join Best Video Film & Cultural Center for a screening of THE STRAIGHT STORY, the third installment in our special screening series:VISIONS OF DARKNESS & LIGHT presented by Best Video’s founder Hank Paper and Christopher Sharrett, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Visual and Sound Media College of Human Development Culture and Media at Seton Hall University of CT on Tuesday, April 16th at 7pm. There will be an introduction and post-screening Q&A with Hank and Chris.
Tickets are free to Best Video Members/$10 for non-members. The Best Video Coffee Bar will be open for beer, wine, café drinks, and free popcorn.
NON-MEMBERS GET YOUR TICKETS HERE
The Straight Story is a 1999 biographical road drama film directed by David Lynch. It was edited and produced by Mary Sweeney, Lynch's longtime partner and collaborator, who also co-wrote the script with John E. Roach. It is based on the true story of Alvin Straight's 1994 journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. Alvin is an elderly World War II veteran who lives with his kind intellectually disabled daughter. When he hears that his estranged brother has suffered a stroke, Alvin makes up his mind to visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies. Because Alvin's legs and eyes are too impaired for him to receive a driver's license, he hitches a trailer to his recently purchased thirty-year-old John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor, having a maximum speed of about 5 miles per hour (2.2 m/s; 8.0 km/h), and sets off on the 240-mile (390 km) journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion, Wisconsin.
The Straight Story was released by Buena Vista Pictures (under the Walt Disney Pictures banner) in the United States, and was a critical success, though it underperformed at the box office. Reviewers praised the intensity of the character performances, particularly the realistic dialogue which film critic Roger Ebert compared to the works of Ernest Hemingway. It received a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and Farnsworth received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
BVFCC would like to acknowledge and thank several organizations for their generous funding which allows us to present our monthly Screening Series. Special thanks go to CT Humanities, CT Office of the Arts, and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.